hello vmware gurus,
now that esxupdate is deprecated (RIP), i'm looking for a more convenient way to scan/stage/update vsphere 5.x using only the command line like i was able to do in 4.x. obviously this is for non-vcenter/update manger setups where that mechanism is *not* available)
specifically, i havent yet been able to figure out how to get the vsphere 5.x host to scan against the vmware public repositories using the "esxcli software" mechanisms.
without the ability to scan from the host i have to manually do patch searches and then manually stage them using wget and then apply them individually (alot more work, and prone to error than the 4.x esxupdate process i was using where i could use the same tool for all of it)
i did find that the vmw-ESXi-5.0.0-metadata.zip file exists for 5.x, but it doesnt seem like esxcli knows how to use it
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-esx-index.xml
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-5.0.0-metadata.zip
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-5.0.0-notification.zip
anybody figure out how to update their standalone hosts directly against the vmware repos?
update to 5.0 Update 1 + April tools update via cli (the more painful method)
# to scan/stage: get the URLs for the updates from http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal
# NOTE: wget on ESXi cant use https://... which is how the URLs come out of the patch portal, edit to http://...
cd /scratch/downloads
wget http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/OFFLINE/release-331-20120408-206167/ESXi500-201204001.zip
# to update:
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
esxcli software vib install -d /scratch/downloads/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip
esxcli software vib install -d /scratch/downloads/ESXi500-201204001.zip
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
reboot
# to clean up:
rm /scratch/downloads/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip
rm /scratch/downloads/ESXi500-201204001.zip
scan/stage/update process for 4.1 via cli (simple/effective/reliable)
esxupdate -m https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-4.1.0-metadata.zip scan
esxupdate -m https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-4.1.0-metadata.zip stage
vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
esxupdate -m https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-4.1.0-metadata.zip update
vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
reboot
never fails that i figure something out right after i post
looks like the https://.. that worked under 4.x is failing as outbound tcp443 is blocked by default
changing over to http://.. looks like im getting somewhere
Scanning/Updating 5.x from CLI (improved method)
# to get a listing of whats in the vmware repo and compare to the local host
# (following command is a single line)
esxcli software sources vib list -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep Update
# to apply updates directly from vmware repo
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
# (following command is a single line)
esxcli software vib update -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
# NOTE: the command above offers no progress indication while it works
# -> to see more of what is happening, open 2 other consoles
# ---> console 2: tail -f /var/log/syslog.log
# ---> console 3: tail -f /var/log/esxupdate.log
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
reboot
--
use this process at your own risk, as vmware certainly isnt calling it out in their docs
Message was edited by: boogieshafer (clarified longer commands are 1 liners)